Leslie Marmon Silko was born on March 5, 1948, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Silko was raised on the Laguna Pueblo Reservation in northern New Mexico, her cultural and ethnic heritage a mix of Laguna Pueblo, Plains Indian, Mexican, and Anglo-American. She attended schools run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and Catholic schools in Albuquerque. Also central to her education were several generations of women in her family, such as her grandmother and aunt, from whom she learned much about her cultural traditions. In 1969, she received her B.A. from the University of New Mexico, where she graduated summa cum laude. Her short story "The Man to Send Rain Clouds" was first published while she was still in college, and has since been reprinted in several anthologies. She briefly attended law school, but left in order to pursue a career in writing. Silko has taught at Navajo...